A tube, a web of sticks and a sound for a name.

KerPlunk came from the Ideal Toy Company. The BBC’s I Love 1967 pages, archived in 2008, say Ideal released KerPlunk in 1967, and that buyers opening the box found a clear plastic tube, a bundle of thin sticks and a supply of marbles. The sticks are pushed through holes in the middle of the tube to form a web, the marbles are poured in on top, and players take turns pulling sticks out while trying not to let the marbles fall through. English Wikipedia describes the same equipment: a transparent plastic tube, plastic rods it calls straws — predominantly yellow and red — and marbles, over a base divided into numbered trays, one for each player, with the tube turned so that its opening lines up with the tray of whoever is playing.

The game is credited to the toy inventor Eddy Goldfarb. Collectors Weekly, in a profile by Lisa Hix published on 24 October 2011, traces Goldfarb’s career from the Yakity-Yak Talking Teeth novelty of 1949, which he took to the designer Marvin Glass and which was produced by the Chicago novelty firm H. Fishlove & Co., and credits Goldfarb with games including Battling Tops, Kerplunk! and Shark Attack! English Wikipedia says Goldfarb devised KerPlunk with Rene Soriano, citing the chapter “Kerplunk and Eddy” in Tim Walsh’s 2005 book Timeless Toys. Wikipedia lists KerPlunk alongside Battling Tops and other Goldfarb games made by Ideal.

The name is itself a piece of design. Wikipedia says the onomatopoeic KerPlunk comes from the sound of the marbles tumbling to the base of the tube during play — the word describes the moment a player loses, which is also the moment everyone at the table is waiting for. The capital P in the middle, used by the BBC and by Wikipedia, splits the word into its two sounds, and the spelling has varied over the years: Hasbro’s UK pages used “KerPlunk”, a Hasbro game mode was called “Ker-Plunked!”, and Mattel’s current US listings use “Kerplunk”.

Ideal itself was a New York toy business. English Wikipedia says it was founded by Morris and Rose Michtom in Brooklyn and was known for its dolls and teddy bears, and for selling the Rubik’s Cube.

From Ideal to Tyco and Mattel, and to Hasbro in Britain.

KerPlunk has followed two separate paths, one in the United States and one in Britain. On the American side, the game moved with Ideal through a series of corporate sales. English Wikipedia says Ideal was sold to CBS Toys in 1982, and that CBS sold it in 1984 to Viewmaster International, which renamed itself View-Master Ideal. The New York Times reported on 24 May 1989 that Tyco Toys had agreed to acquire View-Master Ideal Group, then making dolls, Chemcraft chemistry sets, Erector sets and the game Toss Across as well as View-Master viewers.

Tyco did not stay independent for long. The New York Times reported on 21 March 1997 that the Federal Trade Commission had approved Mattel’s acquisition of Tyco Toys of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, the final step in completing the deal, and Wikipedia says the Ideal line remained part of Tyco until that merger. Today Mattel sells the game in the United States. Its online shop, checked in October 2026, lists a Kerplunk Game under the Mattel Games brand, alongside a Toy Story 5 edition and a Jurassic World Rebirth card game carrying the Kerplunk name. Wikipedia says the modern US version uses a pink or blue tube in place of the original yellow one.

On the British side, the brand went to Hasbro. Wikipedia says Ideal’s United Kingdom assets were sold to Hasbro, which released Mouse Trap, Buckaroo! and KerPlunk under its MB Games brand, and that the game was made by Milton Bradley in the UK before the label changed to Hasbro Gaming. Hasbro’s UK product page for KerPlunk, archived in October 2015, described a version with a spiral chute that sent the marbles “whooshing down”, and listed several ways to play — Ker-Plunked!, Golden Ball, Tricksy Trays and Hot Sticks — while keeping the same aim: to finish with the fewest marbles in your tray. Wikipedia says the UK version, once sold as New KerPlunk, uses a red and green colour scheme with an extra yellow marble, the golden ball, that can add or take away marbles from a player’s total.

Licensed and travel editions have stretched the format further. Wikipedia describes a Toy Story version with a rocket-shaped tube and Little Green Men figures in place of marbles, a KerPlunk Game to Go with a collapsible tube, and KerPlunk 2, whose coloured marbles roll down a spiral path with flashing lights and sounds. It also says a drop-tower ride themed on the game is planned for the Mattel Adventure Park in Glendale, Arizona, citing Attractions Magazine in December 2024.

Design and documentation.

A toy or game is usually met first as a box, and the lid does much of the work that a label does on a bottle or a can. It carries the name in large lettering, a picture of the thing inside or of children using it, and often a line of copy that the brand repeats for years. Because toy and game names change hands between companies, the same name can appear over the decades on lids printed by several different owners, each redrawing the lettering and the artwork in the style of its own time.

That makes the box worth reading as a record. The name on the lid, the company credited in the small print, the country of manufacture and the copyright line together show who made and sold a product at a given moment, and those details can differ from one edition to the next.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started the name, who has owned it since, and how its boxes, logos and advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A sound effect, a see-through tube and a choice of colours.

The KerPlunk identity is built from things a player can see and hear. The tube is transparent, so the whole state of the game — how many straws are left, how the marbles are resting on them — is on show at every turn. The straws give the brand its colour: Wikipedia describes them as predominantly yellow and red, and the BBC’s account of the 1967 game describes the sticks acting as a web that holds the marbles at the top of the tube. The name supplies the sound.

Colour is also where the two branches of the brand have drifted apart. Wikipedia says the original tube was yellow, that the current US version from Mattel uses a pink or blue tube, and that the UK version under Hasbro took a red and green scheme with a yellow golden ball. Mattel’s current listings, which spell the name Kerplunk, use it as an umbrella for themed editions tied to films such as Toy Story 5 and Jurassic World Rebirth, and Hasbro’s British pages used game modes with their own names — Golden Ball, Tricksy Trays, Hot Sticks — to extend the brand without changing the equipment.

Ownership has followed corporate history rather than the game. Ideal released it; Ideal passed to CBS Toys, View-Master Ideal and Tyco; Tyco merged into Mattel in 1997; and Ideal’s British business went to Hasbro.

For a design guide, KerPlunk shows how a brand can be carried by a single sound turned into a word, a see-through object that shows the whole game at a glance and a small set of bright colours, and how the same name can sit comfortably with two different owners and two colour schemes. Compare it with Rubik’s Cube, another puzzle that Ideal sold, and Matchbox, a Mattel brand with a British past. For this guide we use tube yellow, straw red and marble blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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